The Gamer's Quarter

[elvis.shrugged]

I think I might start playing through the first three MGS games tomorrow.

[kirkjerk]

Dr. Mario Online Rx --
The Dr. Mario straight up is doubly disapointing, not just 'cause it only goes up to 2 players but i can't figure out how to remove the stupid "where will it fall" shadows

Germ Buster is kind of really amazing! It's such a cool social exercise, trying to get everyone to work together. Plus little details like tickling the virsues... and the game itself, the way you can grab and drag the falling pill bits after a clear, I think this is a much deeper and richer game than it seems, ESPECIALLY with the multiplayer element.

One thing about Nintendo... between the Miis and the novel controllers, their methodology for assigning players and starting up games is just a horrendous spaghetti mess....
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[simplicio]

Current rentals:
Gurumin (PSP) surprised me with its charming little characters and world, which is really too bad because it seems like the method of play is just running through some generic dungeons and whacking things, and I'll end up feeling like I'm wasting my time whenever I turn it on. Should I continue or send it back?

Assassin's Creed (PS3) has some really neat ideas, chief among them being the incentive to walk calmly rather than hopping around like an idiot. I'd like to see future Half Life material incorporate this concept, honestly. It's also kind of cluttered though; there's a bit early on where you have to sit on a bench and eavesdrop, through some combination of buttons I've forgotten a week later. And it keeps prompting me to interact with people but remains unresponsive to my attempts to do so.
This seems to be one of those games that hinges strongly around its own videogame laws; I'm not sure whether I should give up and send it back or buy it to continue messing around at a more relaxed pace.
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"Worlds turn the new machine to thee. To thee. Though, thine the new machine space."
-Kurt Schwitters, 1919

[Shapermc]

[simplicio]

[ryan]

I'm currently being unimpressed by the new, underwhelming Bourne title. Age of Conan is taking up the rest of my gaming time. School and work are taking up about 95% of my time, sadly, so to hell with you, life, but that's just for a few more weeks.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[kirkjerk]

Played Mario Kart Wii online for the first time.

Hell, almost the first time for MKW... I haven't even unlocked any levels, so it's nice that the online play lets you randomly select 'em.

I still feels like Nintendo hates me whenever I try to set up the network... shouldn't it be able to detect what kind of network security I'm using rather than me picking from a list? Shouldn't it be able to give me a list of wifi networks it can see? Why do friend codes exist?

Then there was the confusion of setting up the game... one player has to setup a room, the other player has to look for them ,and it all makes sense eventually byt the first time is very confusing as two newbie players just sit their waiting for the other.

I'm still surprised at how Nintendo has not set up a single consistent way of letting people sign into a game... or even insisting everyone always grab a Mii, even if it's just a guest one. The platform really could have used some standardized sign in screens or even best practices.

The actual gameplay seemed pretty smooth, I will say that.

I sorely missed the Xbox headset type talking while playing w/ some friends in a small group kind of setting, but I guess don't miss it that much in the 12 person races.
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[Shapermc]

[aderack]

Finally fixed something and managed to play Mighty Jill Off. Pretty good extrapolation of the moves, there! Any longer and it could have gotten obnoxious.

Beyond the obvious, I also see or imagine Kid Icarus, Gumshoe, and kinda-sorta Adventures of Lolo influences.

I want to be able to stand on the sides of spikes. That's maybe my favorite innovation in Sonic the Hedgehog, and I miss it in other games.

I also kind of wish the recovery after a death/fall were more seamless. You fall this far! Now get up and go!
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[dessgeega]

i've written a little about demonophobia, which is a game i can't recommend anyone play.
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[SuperWes]

Metal Gear 4 is amazing. I was expecting to be constantly bombarded by cutscenes and to get frustrated, but there really is a whole lot of absolutely amazing game to be found in between the story.

-Wes
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[ryan]

Playing with SPSS again, but the damn thing won't install in Vista. It's supposed to be compatible, but it crashes during the install. I would use XP, but I can't from my time using the evaluation version a year ago. Damn stupid registry.

I'm also trying to get the widescreen mod to work with Planescape - I also have BG2 and IWD2 - but I keep running into errors about 3/4 of the way during the install. I'm going to try uninstalling/reinstalling Planescape itself.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Lestrade]

I should be playing MGS4 by now but I went out for a friend's bachelor shindig last night and am spending the day at home projectile vomiting instead. Hrhk.

[Mr Mustache]

[kirkjerk]

Playing that new Hulk-movie tie

EDIT: rather, the sense of growth and exploration Ultimate Destruction had- though overall the similarities are striking

Not bad, but it lacks a sense of growth and exploration.

Ed Norton's sad sack face lovingly rendered in CGI for cut scenes is kind of hilarious.
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[Shapermc]

Act 1 of MGS4 finished. At this point _most_ of the story has been spoiled in one way or another by trailers, but I belive MOST of those are done. There's only one distinct part of a trailer I've yet to see in the game.

That said, It's good so far.

ALSO: No spoilers in this thread about the game.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[ryan]

My dad can't find the MGS4 80GB PS3 bundle anywhere. It's the only way to get the 80GB, so he's been waiting a while. Sooonnyyyy!!!!

I beat Bourne Identity. For not being overly lengthy, some parts stretch on for way too long. And I can't stand that they arbitrarily toss counters on situations to make things more difficult. Some of the levels are flat out awesome, in particular the library, since the environment is mostly destructible and seeing a room full of papers and books flying and floating about is rad.

The 360 version of Enemy Territory Quake Wars was also started yesterday. They did a good job fitting everything to the controller, and aiming is silky smooth. I'm enjoying it, but I enjoyed the PC version as well. The PC AI is as inept as usual - somehow the enemy can be pushed back to one sector and still win - but the game is still a blast.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Shapermc]

Man, I was so in love with ET:QW for the longest time, but no one was playing it online so I bascially just slowly stopped myself. I should check it back out again now that I'm hardwired rather than wireless. Perhaps I should just get the 360 version. I always felt that the controls would work perfectly with a controller.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[ryan]

Yeah, I was pretty bummed that it didn't pick up more steam online. I'm playing it offline for a bit more to get accustomed enough to the controls so that I feel comfortable when going against other folk. I wish the AI had been tweaked though, having to do all the key objectives myself is a bitch.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[kirkjerk]

More thoughts on the new Incredible Hulk game:
At one point there is a kind of irritating battle against the "U-foes" (I was kind of hoping they were a small tea made up for the game, but I guess they're a part of Marvel lore)

So the game mentioned some kind of thunder attack could kill the Vapor gal. I assumed it was the full, ten "rage point" consuming attack, and wasted a lot of time building rage, only to see it wasted because I didn't do the smaller clap attack (tap of the same buttons as the big attack)

EDIT: oh yeah I forgot that I was going to mention that one of Vapor's attack was a rage sapping attack... so ironically, the monster's rage meter goes down as the player's rage goes up! Was she like blowing marijuana at him, making him all mellow?

Which brings me to the whole point of the weirdness of a rage meter, especially with the story of the hulk. Like in GTA 4, a player might want to play nice protaganist who mostly avoids killing innocents. But the player is compelled to attack things at random. So maybe the player, despite the feeling of control, is forced to share Banner's helplessness.

I watched my friend play a bit of WoW. It always strikes I'd as weird how you'll be on a plain, picking off enemies one at a time as their nominal buddies ignore them because of arbitrary range issues. Hulk has some similar things going, almost to the point where sometimes your "pulling aggro"...
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[ApM]

I've been playing Deadly Rooms Of Death: Architect's Edition (the free one) pretty heavily. I first encountered it back when it was Windows 3.1 shareware; I got scared off much too easily, thinking, for some reason, that the added difficulty later on would have to come from mastering arbitrary diagonal movements and sword swings to figure out how to clear out larger and uglier swarms of cockroaches.

Reading through the "Ideas for Architects" section of the documentation, I realized I needn't have worried. Although he does make some of the mistakes he cautions against (these levels are over ten years old, after all; he had to learn these lessons somewhere), the document itself is a joy to read. It's a succinct and clear explanation of a delightful and inspiring design philosophy, and the ideas outlined within are what pushes DROD from being an interesting set of mechanics to one of the finest puzzle games ever designed.

[Lestrade]

I am about 15 hours into MGS4 (Act 4—holy fucking shit) and I am in love. I am deeply impressed how, comic-book style, Kojima has managed to turn the previous three games into a cohesive storyline. I feel like MGS2 could be vindicated in the eyes of haters with this game. I'm sure there were script re-writes of StarWarsian proportions to make this all work, but as a fan of complex, twisting narratives, I'm loving every minute. Every couple of hours, a "!" appears over my wife's head as I yell, "No fucking way!" at some plot point or another.

I haven't been so infatuated in a long, long time. I want to plow through this but I want to savour it, as every moment is pure bliss.

There are gameplay moments that are too good to explain. I feel like for the first time, I'm "good" at MGS, and am learning to grief the game and think about what's going on. For example, one boss encounter was long, long, long, and after I knew a key point, I realized, "Hey, the next time I play this, I can probably beat this boss in one move." I feel like I've been playing chess for years but am only now understanding how the game works.

[Lestrade]

P.S. I talk to everyone at work now in the voice of Old Snake. It's awesome.

[Harveyjames]

Cave Story. How the fuck do you save Curly Brace from dying? ; _ ;

One thing I love about this kind of adventure fiction is the melancholy feeling you get leaving the characters behind at the end. Jeff Smith's comic book Bone springs to mind. It's like your time with them is made all the more poignant and special for its fleetingness, or something. I dunno. I don't really know what I'm talking about!

I think that's a perfect incentive to replay a game, though; that you can go back in just to spend more time with these characters you love. That in Cave Story it's possible to even save the life of a major character in a seemingly linear storyline is extra-special. It's brilliant.

BLARGH, a little girl just spat in my face when she said her name (Poo).

[sediment]

James Harvey: It's been a while, so some details might be off...
Basically you can't take the booster when the doc first offers it to you - turn him down then head to the right and look for a very subtle sparkle in some debris on the ground. You get an item that allows you to tow Curly with you, you need to be sure you stop for air in a small room soonish so she can drain her water out, annnnd that should do it I think. There might be additional steps after that.

Note that what you're aiming for and doing everything right from there makes the last portion of the game REALLY HARD. REALLY REALLY HARD.
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[Swimmy]

Not just turn him down. You have to deliberately bypass him. If you fall down the hole he's in, you're stuck taking the booster from him. On the left ledge, there's a little red dot on one of the bricks. Jump exactly while running over that dot and you can cross without falling. The sparkle on the ground is after the boss fight with the core. Other than that, follow sed's tips. There are some other things, later, but they should be obvious. Don't worry, you're supposed to lose track of her at one point, you'll find her again.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Harveyjames]

Yeah, I realised that too late.. I took the Booster pack! That kind of sucks, because the booster pack and the tow cable shouldn't really be related to each other. It's a pretty arbitrary switch to base a major plot point around. It's like Tower of Druaga or something. Jump on the turtle's head three times and don't pick up the wizard's key on level 4, and you can get the lightning rod on level 12!

Apparently if you can keep the prof. alive you can get a booster pack 2.0 somewhere along the line? Presumably you have to avoid shooting the eighth mushroom on the left in the graveyard at the start or something.

[Intentionally Wrong]

Minor Cave Story spoilers follow (only relevant to the discussion at hand).


You guys are getting your conditions crossed. Booster 2.0 is only necessary to get the "real" ending; you can save Curly without it. To save Curly, you need to go all the way to the bottom-right corner of the bosses room once you win and the place floods; during the waterway escape sequence, you MUST get out at the little room half-way through the level. When you do, you'll go inside and put Curly on the bed; don't forget to read up on how to fix waterlogging before following the instructions to help Curly. After a short rest, she'll be awake for a little bit; you'll then put her on your back again for the rest of the trip, until you're separated.

(To cure her memory loss later on in the game, come back to the mushroom chamber in the mimiga village and enter the room above. Talk to the mushroom until you work your way through the conversation, then fight it, and bring your trophy back to her.)

((To get the "real" ending you need Booster 2.0, the Timer from the clock room, the tow rope, and you need to have saved Curly and gotten the good result from the final battle.)
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Okay!

[Harveyjames]

I saved Curly. They really don't make it easy, though! It's designed to seem like it's not actually possible to skip helping the professor. There's no real signposting that you would even want to, besides maybe the broken teleport in that room which says 'maybe someone technically minded can fix this', which seems like a clue that you want to keep the professor alive.

Even so, it requires a significant leap of logic to assume that not talking to the professor as he dies will in fact stop him from dying.

Maybe Pixel wanted to keep the circumstances of Curly's surviving so obtusely hidden that it would just pass into legend, like, I dunno, the 'ghost' that was supposed to be in GTA3 or something. It's kind of a relic of the pre-internet era in that sense. I think it would have been cool in the famicom era when game secrets spread by word-of-mouth. The internet takes a lot of the mystery out of games in that respect, since it's now perfectly possible for anybody to read up on how to do it on gamefaqs, and see how dumb and obscure the method of allowing her to survive is.

[Shapermc]

[Harveyjames]

i'm just before the boss. I used up my life pot in Final Cave: hidden, though. I've since discovered this is going to make the Sacred Grounds level impossible, since it's virtually incompletable without the pot.

So, I'm going to have to fly back through Final Cave: Hidden, get a new life pot from Jenka in sand zone, then complete Final Cave: Hidden again without using the pot this time. Then defeat the three final bosses without using the life pot because I need to save it for the Sacred Grounds. You weren't kidding when you said this was going to get hard!

Generally, I'm really pleased with how the difficulty has ramped up so far. The labyrinth section where you fight alongside Curly Brace plays completely differently with no machine gun / booster pack / powerful weapon (I refused the Snake because I was holding out for the Spur). You're also forced to make the most of the 4 weapons you have, and you realise how well thought out they are, with each weapon serving a distinct different purpose. Final Cave: hidden was fun, too.He could have made the whole game like that if he'd wanted.

Oh yeah! I didn't realise Curly Brace was the name of a punctuation mark until just now, since I now know the main character is called Quote. Weird. They should have called her Curly Bracket.

[Harveyjames]

Just reading Action Button.net. Tim say of Call of Duty 4, which he liked a lot, "Hardly any “ingenuity” went into the crafting of this experience, and I say that with the utmost respect." I kind of thought the same thing about Cave Story. There's nothing original in this game, it just takes a bunch of things other games have tried to do and takes the time to do them right. I like that.

There's a point late on in the game where the hermit gunsmith says something like 'I always thought that people in this world are either users or creators, but this has confirmed it for me. When you think that people will give your work their utmost appreciation, it turns every labor into a joy'. This is surely Pixel's own philosophy. It's actually quite inspiring. I'd like to be a creator!

[ryan]

I'm playing through Metal Gear Solid 4 now. So far, it doesn't feel Metal Geary, stiff controls aside. I've played a little of all of the previous versions, but I tended to lose interest because I was given all these cool toys and had to control my urges. I'm finding that 4 lets me go all out with them, but I also noticed that I'm doing very little sneaking. I just finished the first part, so maybe it slows down after that, but this is like Ghost Recon Light than anything else. A friend of mine who has finished all versions of the console releases was taken aback by just how out forward it was. Personally, I like this approach. I did notice a few ways to get around each area, so I'm assuming stealth is possible if you have that mindset.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Redeye]

700 Hobo Names is a 53-minute spoken word thingamajig.

And some guy elited it!

Or maybe he just had a fake song of the same name that he could beat easily.
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I felt sheer anarchic joy when I ran over my first pedestrian.

[Shapermc]

You know, i've recently been thinking about listening/playing podcasts with Audiosurf. Specifically videogame podcasts to add a meta layer too it all.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Harveyjames]

Cross-posted from the news thread.

I'm a little late to the party, but Starmen.net are having a mass EB playthrough over at http://ebfgp.net/1 . Every day they'll post a new entry saying which bits you need to play today, and little bits of trivia about the section you're playing, as well as challenges and things like that. Awesome! I'm well overdue for an Earthbound playthough, since I've only managed to play it through to the end once. It's a good thing to do in the run-up to mother 3, too.

I've named the characters the same as I named them on the first ever playthrough I did- James, Lucy (my sister's name), Tom (my best friend in college) and Bva (mine and Tom's best friend). The dog is named after my pet as a child, Jack. I played the game in the first year of university, and felt quite lonely and adrift at that point- I suppose I was pining for the familiarity of home.

The game is sort of breaking my heart because I'm remembering all the things I felt when first playing through it- when you mum says things like 'you're growing up so fast, you have a big adventure ahead of you' it reminds me of how resonant those words were to me at 19, on my first time living away from home. Likewise the absent father figure. Your relationship with your father in the game mirrored my real-life relationship with my own dad completely. It's sad; it's like I'm not just revisiting Earthbound, I'm revisiting who I was 6 years ago. Perhaps that's quite fitting since like my 19-year-old self, I've just moved to a whole new part of the world where I have to make a whole new set of friends, and I'm feeling quite lost. Hopefully, this means I should be as fully engaged in Earthbound this time around as I was the first time I played it.

Funny that all the other times I tried to play the game since the first I wasn't able to devote myself to it so fully. It's like Earthbound will always be there for me, but only when I really need it.

[Lestrade]

Beat MGS4 today. Would post more, but I've had a few beers after watching a free, public show of Video Games Live—videos to come!

[dhex]

dear titan quest, when do you end? or are we going to go through every single motif of "antiquity" we can find?

still though the hanging gardens are nice.
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[dhex]

the answer to the above question is "yes, yes we are going to go through every known motif of antiquity, thank you very much."
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[dessgeega]

my snes just arrived from texas, so i've finally been able to play my copy of libble rabble. details later.
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[Harveyjames]

Man it did not take me long to lose impetus on my Earthbound playthrough

One day, in fact!

[dessgeega]

shadow dancer is another game that is emphatically better at home than in the arcade. the mega drive version has really smart level design where the arcade just has cheap hits from enemies that hide off-screen. it also has COLOR. shadow dancer arcade is all grays and browns; it even has, no foolin', a sewer level. the great thing about the home version is that it actually builds one of the arcade game's lesser creatures, shinobi's dog attacking enemies, into a game mechanic. in shadow dancer in-your-living-room, you can actually sic the dog on enemies armed with pistols and shields to occupy them while you creep up and give them a swift kick.

i've been playing on the second difficulty level. i really appreciate that difficulty doesn't just tweak the numbers: it actually changes the count and positions of enemies you encounter. (there's also a mode that gives you no shuriken, forcing you to get close to all your enemies to dispatch them.)

i like that shinobi and its sequel are fast-paced but encourage planning and force you to always consider your approach. and while i'm speaking about shinobi and its relatives (rolling thunder, elevator action), i will go ahead and claim that crime city is rolling thunder as a beat'emup.
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[Shapermc]

I must have missed something, but explain why Shadow Dancer is worth another look again. I mean, it's stiff, slow, and the sprites are too large (iirc). Am I missing something?
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[dessgeega]

you played the arcade version.
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[SuperWes]

Yeah, I love Shadow Dancer. I liked it in the arcades the few times I randomly played it, but I love the home version. I definitely like it better than Revenge of Shinobi at least.

-Wes
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[Shapermc]

[jjsimpso]

I don't think Shaper is too far off the mark on Shadow Dancer. I do like how you have to plan your actions carefully, but that aspect is ruined by all the surprise attacks and other situations that you have to learn about through trial and error. In the end, progress is mostly determined by how well you've memorized the levels. Also, the bosses kind of suck.

The dog, however, is pretty cool

Bottom line, it is worth a look, but without some kind of nostalgic value I don't see it as anything special.

[ryan]

School and work has been kicking my ass, so I've had little time for games. I've been able to squeeze in a few minutes of FreeSpace 2 via the FreeSpace Open project. I think I'm going to cancel Conan. I have no desire to play it anymore. I had high hope for it, too.
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[dhex]

http://kotaku.com/5022132/64-percent-of-those-polled-gave-up-wii-fit

to tie back into the bit of this thread from a month or two ago.
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[Shapermc]

Consider me shocked!










/sarcasm
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"